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On the night of August 30, 1966, a large crowd gathered outside the Community Concourse in downtown San Diego. The event was to start at eight PM but the line had begun to form early and by the time the doors opened it stretched around the block. As quickly as the box office could process the admissions, several thousand teenagers filled the hall to capacity and ticket sales ceased. Despite the prevalent romantic view of the innocent time before flower children and psychedelic drugs, those in attendance were frisked before entering, and scores of knives, brass knuckles, and bottles were confiscated. Security was tight and was supervised by Ron Nery and Ernie Ladd of the San Diego Chargers, whose presence was by itself enough to communicate that no monkey business would be tolerated. There was plenty of backup just in case. But no one was there to fight. They had come to dance, and the best dancers in town were in attendance, right down front as always. Although they couldn’t have known it at the time, what they had come to witness and celebrate was the end of a period of American culture characterized by rhythm and blues, teased hair and ducktails, hot rods, and dances like the Jerk, the Hully-Gully, the Mashed Potatoes, the Pony, the Climb, and the Monkey. Even though we were halfway through the decade, the true beginning of the “sixties” culture, with hippies, love beads, pot, LSD, and peace signs, didn’t come into its own until early in 1967 at the first “Human Be-In” in San Francisco, and during the following “Summer of Love.” Within a year after this August night in 1966, dancing at rock concerts, real dirty dancing that the movie of the same name weakly represented, would be passé, replaced by trance-induced twirling and ungainly spasms. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The fans who gathered on that night in 1966 had come to say farewell to Sandi and the Accents. In the three or four short years since their first meeting they had become an institution so beloved that schools and other organizations felt they could not schedule important events without first ascertaining that the band was available to perform. During the summer when Southern California was in full flower, they played for thousands of young dancers at half a dozen sold out venues every single week. They had four top ten singles in the region, one of which, “Better Watch Out Boy,” was nationally charted. When a local radio station asked its listeners to vote for their favorite artists, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Righteous Brothers had to take their place behind the Accents. Only the Beatles were more popular. The Accents got their start when guitarists Frank Mannix and Don Lovas met as they were both hired to fill in for other members of a band called the Shadows in early 1962. Frank was just 14, Don 17, but both were already veterans of other bands. Frank was in the Vibrants with a singer named Linda Young, and Don had his own band, the Galaxies, with drummer Tony Johnson. Things just clicked between them, and these four soon left their respective bands to form a new band they called the Accents.
Frank began to book the band for dances at public and private schools and various church youth groups. They worked steadily, but at this point it can’t be said they were really turning many heads. In the summer of 1962, 17-year-old Gabe Lapano moved to San Diego with his family. He enrolled at Helix High School, the school Linda Young attended. Many bands form when high school friends begin performing together, but this was the only instance where two members of the Accents actually met at high school. Frank went to Saint Augustine, Don to Mt. Miguel, Tony to Grossmont, Doug to Crawford, and Sandi to Monte Vista. If they had not been known through a musicians’ grapevine, they most likely would never have met. In any case, during that first fall semester Gabe caught Linda’s attention as he sat playing the piano in the choir room at Helix and she asked him if he wanted to stop by one of the Accents’ rehearsals. Gabe brought his Wurlitzer electric piano over to Tony’s parents’ house, where the band rehearsed in the living room. Like Don, Frank, and Tony, Gabe was already a seasoned musician and singer, having played consistently since the age of fourteen with well-known bands in the Spokane area. As of this time the Accents had no male vocalist, so Gabe’s pure, high tenor was a needed, and very welcome, addition. The group worked up a whole night’s worth of songs in one evening and Gabe was in the band, singing songs like “Daddy’s Home,” “Do You Love Me,” and “California Sun.” Shortly thereafter, Linda had to leave the band because of health reasons, so the four-piece early core of the Accents was now set. The band had been playing with two guitar players to fill out the sound, but now that a second chord instrument was aboard, Frank switched to the Fender Precision bass guitar, a recently developed innovation. All of the rock classics of the fifties had utilized the string bass, but guitar players were picking up the new instrument and developing a fresh set of styles to go with it. The instrumentation of electric piano, guitar, bass, and drums has now become the standard for all country, R&B, pop, and rock bands, but at the time it was still a little unusual, as was the ability of instrumentalists to sing. The band was gigging steadily and in 1963 expanded the roster by adding Don Beck on tenor saxophone. In the spring of that year Mike Hayden and Don Lovas had the idea of promoting dances every Sunday night featuring the band at the Spring Valley Chamber of Commerce Building, located on, believe it or not, Memory Lane. The hall had a capacity of 300, but on the first night there were no more than thirty people there, which didn’t impress anyone. Mike and Don felt, however, that word of mouth would bring more folks in, so they decided to continue for a while at a loss to build up the crowd. Slowly, that’s exactly what happened. At this time Doug Meyers was in the horn section of San Diego’s most prominent band, the Nomads, who played every Wednesday night during the summer at the La Mesa Youth Center. This was a big, rocking band with multiple singers and four or five horns doing choreographed steps, in the style of the rhythm and blues bands that characterized the San Diego music scene before the Accents. For reasons that no one seems to remember clearly, Meyers left the Nomads and joined the Accents, and Beck left the Accents and joined the Nomads. There were no hard feelings on either side, however. When the school year ended in the spring of 1963 high school kids were ready to party, and the word about the Chamber of Commerce dances had gotten around. The very first Sunday dance after school ended drew revelers from all over San Diego County, in numbers triple the capacity of the hall. When the doors were closed after the first 300, the crowd outside broke them down. At eight o’clock the band began with US Bonds’ “School Is Out”: A-One, A-Two, A-One -Two-Three-Four A surge of primal ecstasy filled the room, pumped up by a flood of hormones. Kids actually screamed as they rushed the dance floor. Suddenly, on that night, and perhaps at that moment, the Accents had become the number one band in San Diego. In 1963, with all members now in the band except Sandi. Another band on the scene at the time named the Valiants featured a female vocalist named Sandi Rouse. From time to time they hired Gabe Lapano to play piano. Meanwhile the Accents had decided to add a girl singer to the band, and made an announcement about upcoming auditions at their Sunday dance. A friend of Sandi’s convinced her to give it a try, although she felt torn about leaving her group. On the night of the auditions, a couple of dozen girls found their way to the Accents’ rehearsal at Tony’s house. Each chose a song to showcase her abilities and as the band listened, all were recorded on a reel-to-reel machine. By the end of the night it seemed that Sandi and a couple of other girls were clearly the best, but in the tumult of the process, the band thought it wise to review the tapes before making a decision. When everyone had left, Tony started listening to the various performances. When he came to Sandi’s, a rendition of Kathy Young’s “A Thousand Stars,” he stopped and called Frank. “Man, you’ve got to come back over here. This girl, Sandi, is just in a completely different league from the rest of the singers.” Frank immediately got back into his car and drove back over to Tony’s, where they both listened many times, more certain after each. Sandi was in the band. She was an immediate hit with the fans. The band’s repertoire could now be expanded to include songs that became favorites of the dancers, such as “Heat Wave,” “Be My Baby,” and Ike and Tina’s “A Fool In Love.” She also joined Gabe for duets on songs like “Unchained Melody” and “Goodnight, My Love.” Without ever discussing it with each other, the Accents understood they were a dance band. Bob Dylan was still an obscure cult figure, and the age of the singer/songwriter hadn’t quite dawned. Their goal was tribal entrancement, not a shared personal vision. The band felt that if they played well on a particular night, romance might blossom for the couples on the dance floor. On the other hand if the groove was lost, heartbreak may be the result. Maybe it was a silly conceit; maybe it wasn’t. The band members who have continued to play remember audiences that danced to the music with great affection. It’s not at all the same when everyone sits and stares, or waves their hands from side to side at the band’s instigation, a pallid demonstration compared to working it out doing the The Swim. The crowds of those days were not passively observing the music--they were participating in it. At their weekly rehearsals, members would bring recordings of songs they thought the band might like to learn. But if it was decided that “you can’t dance to it,” the song was rejected out of hand. If the group decided to learn it, the singers would write down the words as each instrumentalist would concentrate on matching the sound on the record. Bass parts were hard to hear on the simple portable record player, so 45’s were listened to at 78 RPM to distinguish the notes. On the other hand, instrumental passages that were lightning fast were slowed to 33 1/3 RPM so every note could be captured. Once the song was learned, its survival in the repertoire would depend on the reaction of the dancers. The audience at a dance didn’t respond by applauding after every song, yet the band could feel what they liked. A Battle of the Bands was a common event during the fifties and sixties, echoing a tradition that goes back to the early days of jazz. Two bands or more would play and the crowd voted. At the end of the night the winning band took the money from the ticket sales. It is measure not merely of their popular appeal but also of their excellence that the Accents never lost a battle. Eventually, bands would want to battle the Accents even though they knew they couldn’t win, simply to be able to say they had been in a battle with them, as if this by itself lent them credibility. A small record company soon was interested, and the band traveled to record at a top LA studio. In the early sixties, stereo was still fairly new, and 45 RPM singles were released in mono. Recording was done on professional reel-to-reel stereo recorders, but as there were only two tracks to use, any overdubs were done by “bouncing” the two original tracks to another machine while mixing in the added material. This of course resulted in the loss of a tape generation, but it was the only way to multi-track. There was no producer present, and the Accents were novices in the studio, but the session went well nonetheless. The result was their first single, “Better Watch Out Boy,” a song composed by one of Sandi’s acquaintances, George Semper. The record climbed to the top ten in San Diego and top twenty in LA and a few other major cities. They followed this with “I’ve Got Better Things To Do,” written for Accents by the LA team of Sloan and Barri, the composers of “Eve of Destruction” and “Secret Agent Man.” “What Do You Want To Do” and “On The Run” were the next releases, both written by the Accents’ own Gabe Lapano. All of these were top twenty singles in Southern California. The band’s popularity continued to grow, enhanced now by airplay and television appearances on shows like those of Lloyd Thaxton and Regis Philbin. They played bigger and bigger venues, and during the summer were booked solid in the largest dancehalls in the region, drawing capacity crowds. They toured throughout the state, and on one night that didn’t seem particularly noteworthy, a duo opened for them near LA consisting of an oddly dressed man and a gangly, dark-haired girl. They called themselves Sonny and Cher. But by the summer of 1966 it was time for the Accents to move on. They had offers of record deals from big labels but had not been comfortable with the virtually total control the companies sought over their bookings and image. Saxophonist Doug Meyers had recently been drafted into the US Army. Bassist and leader Frank Mannix had been admitted to Stanford University. Lead singer and keyboardist Gabe Lapano had an offer to join another San Diego institution, the Cascades, and Tony Johnson, the drummer, had been admitted to Pomona College. Sandi Rouse and guitarist Don Lovas had married and Sandi soon gave birth to their beautiful daughter, Tonya. It was time for the band to move on in another way, as well. On the day before the Accents’ last show the Beatles had played their final live concert in San Francisco, still in suits. But other bands, like the Stones and the Byrds, let their hair grow and did away with uniforms. Although in 1966 kids were still getting expelled from school for wearing their hair in the early Beatle mop-top fashion, a year later long hair was almost universal among musicians. Bands took to thinking of themselves as “artists,” and soon a new magazine, Rolling Stone, would help provide intellectual momentum for this new image. Music critics for the first time were taking rock music seriously, and the dance styles that were central to the culture the Accents represented were now perceived as quaint and silly. Bands took psychedelic liberties with song forms and for the most part abandoned the kind of rhythm and blues roots the Accents worshipped. Instead of Beatle boots and tight pants, guys now sported 501 jeans, beards, Pendleton shirts, and serapes. Girls did away with shaving their legs, teasing their hair, and wearing tight skirts and sexy make-up, and began wearing granny dresses and emanating the scent of patchouli oil. Change was in the air. That August 1966 evening came to a close as Sandi and Gabe, for the last time, sang the Jesse Belvin classic, “Goodnight My Love.” Is your love still warm for me, or has it grown cold? As the crowd slowly left the hall, the band began to pack up their gear. When the big dance floor was empty and silent, the custodial staff arrived to begin sweeping up as amplifiers and drums were loaded into the trunks of cars. The band members drove off into the night, and the dancing, the summer, and an era had come to an end. |